


Your Always

by thesilverarrow



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, past Third Doctor/Sarah Jane Smith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5002684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/thesilverarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He couldn't imagine roaming the galaxies without her. Unfortunately, he was getting the distinct feeling that she had one foot out of the TARDIS door these days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Always

What the TARDIS had translated as the "dungeon" they were trapped in was not especially...dungeon-y. It was all warm wood walls and a worn plank floor and straw mattresses. There was one door and, at the high ceiling, high above their reach, two small windows letting in the blue sunlight of the northern hemisphere of Rillex. 

That light should have been a comfort, but it was mostly just too warm. He'd already shed his coat and scarf, and his shoes were in the corner holding his socks and propping up his hat. For her part, Sarah had come out of her green shirt, leaving just a thin black camisole, with apparently nothing supportive underneath it. He wasn’t sure if he loved or hated earth culture in the late 20th century.

The room was wide and long, wide enough for her to studiously ignore him and long enough for him to pace the floor, contemplating what was a somewhat desperate plan, but workable.

"Must you?" she finally said in a frustrated huff.

He didn't turn around, didn't dare look at her bare white shoulders and the curve of her breasts. Normally, he was quite good at ignoring basic biological promptings, but nothing about Sarah had ever struck him -- either version of him that had known her -- as basic. 

Looking back at his earlier incarnations was always disorienting, but for some reason, his immediate predecessor was just shy of unfathomable. For one, the man was vain, and he used his fists too much. Somehow, he'd alienated Miss Shaw, a very bright girl who really might've benefitted from some adventure. Then there was Miss Grant. Beautiful as Jo was, he couldn't imagine falling so hard for her. 

The man's connection with Sarah, however, made perfect sense. She was certainly one of the more stubborn people he'd ever met. Despite this -- or maybe because of it -- she was indispensible to him. He couldn't imagine roaming the galaxies without her. Unfortunately, he was getting the distinct feeling that she had one foot out of the TARDIS door these days. She'd finally begun to adapt to him in this body, which apparently made it easier to see how he didn't come up to his former measure in ways he hadn't yet figured out. Now, this current misunderstanding with the Rill tribe just might be the straw that broke the --

"Honestly," she muttered.

"I think better when I move," he snapped, his steps faltering, but only for a second, as he began to unbutton his waistcoat.

"Since when?" she retorted.

"Since always."

"Yes," she said in a gloomy tone, "your always."

At that, he finally stopped. Dropping his waistcoat beside him, he sat down on the opposite side of the room, facing her, his back against the wall. 

"I asked you if you wanted to discuss my regeneration," he said. "You said you didn't."

"You asked me that weeks ago," she all but squawked. "Weeks ago, I didn't want to talk about it."

"That's very helpful."

"Well, I'm sorry if I have a human reaction to a very inhuman thing."

"Inhuman?"

Her expression softened a bit. "I didn't mean it that way."

"Oh, but you did. I'm quite happy not being one of your species, by the way. But it pains me to think I will always be alien to you."

Apparently, her sympathy was short-lived, because her eyes flashed and she said:

"Your always, yes."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"What do you think it means?"

"I think this all makes me tired." He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall with a thud. Almost instantly, he thought better and raised it again, his eyes popping open. "It would make me a good deal less tired if I didn't have to guess what was happening in that brain of yours."

She scowled and muttered, "As though you're easy to read."

"I don't even know what it is we're arguing about."

"Of course you don't. Neither do I. Not what started it, anyway."

"What?"

"Not that it's ever mattered before."

"Of course it has."

"I mean... You, the other you, we were absolute rubbish at working through our frustrations with each other. Except when we...you know..." She raised her eyebrows and then sighed, letting her own head fall back against the wall.

Yes, he knew.

It's not that he hadn't thought about all the hows and whys and ifs and whens of this tension hanging between them. It's just that it would've been stupid to jump into a sexual relationship again, given that he was a different self. In fact, until this very moment, he wasn't sure whether she would even want such a thing. 

No, that wasn't right either. She wanted him. He'd been seeing that this last little while. Whether she wanted to want it, whether it was anything more than just biology, that was another story. That's why he'd been keeping his distance. Harry had been lovely for that, but Harry wasn't here. Thankfully, because what they really needed to do was have a long, rather nasty sort of --

He felt like he'd been hit with a bolt from a Zygon stunning ray. His mouth dropped open.

"Aha," she said. "Now it's using its considerable brainpower for some petty emotional calculus."

"We didn't fight. We would just... And then everything was fine."

"What I love, so very much, is how you apparently didn't know that."

"No no no. I knew it. I believe I perfected that particular coping mechanism long before you stumbled into my TARDIS. I just...forgot?"

"Forgot?"

"Yes. I, me -- I forgot."

He thought that would settle it, but evidently he'd just made it worse. She sat up now, so she could stare him down. 

"So arguing with me now doesn't make you remember? It doesn't make you feel anything?"

There was never a good way to explain to humans the veritable paradox of the regenerated self. Previous selves are always there and never there. Their lives are always in reach but just out of reach. To put it another way, the memories are perfectly reachable but not exactly feelable, because they're not yours. As such, they're startlingly easy to not-remember.

Of course, that wasn't the issue, not really. 

"I don't know why you've gotten it into your head that I'm some sort of...I don't know...robot? Does you shouting at me make me want to shag your brains out? Of course it does. But so does you talking, walking... Breathing."

Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth came open like she'd speak, but she apparently didn't have words. Good.

Except he didn't really have words, either, and he found that he couldn't look her in the eye anymore. Finally, he offered this: 

"I didn't want to presume."

Her voice was soft when she said, "You thought I didn't want you anymore."

"It's not a stupid assumption," he snapped.

"No, it's not. It's...very thoughtful, actually. Unfortunately, I misread you."

He looked up at her again, and he couldn't help but smile, mainly because she was smiling, if sadly.

She added, "I told you I was illiterate in that department, right?"

"Evidently, we both are. What did you misread?"

"I assumed... Well, I assumed what I felt for you was always written plainly on my face, that you would've known when I..."

"Oh, dear girl, by then I had stopped looking."

She stood up, then, and crossed the small space that separated them, dropping down beside him. Despite the heat, he was glad for her nearness. Something in him settled, for the first time in a long while, longer than he'd care to dwell on.

Leaning her head against his shoulder, she said, "For the record, I was fairly thrown for a loop when you changed. You wouldn't have wanted to have this conversation then. It took some adjustment."

"As it did for me."

"Yeah?"

"Of course. Just because I've done it before doesn't mean it's not bloody strange."

"That's funny, because I was thinking you're not actually strange at all, at least no more than you ever where. You're still him, even when you're infuriating."

"Especially then. And I'm not, though."

"Not?"

"Him. That is precisely what I'm not. Anything that's not me down to the core is either I or him."

"Did I mention being thrown for a loop? I liked him, the him him and the him that you are, too, how's that? Then here you come -- all long legs and blue eyes and a voice that does things to me."

"Oh?"

She nodded, smiling. It was so quickly and irreversibly electric that he knew he'd been acting a blind idiot of late -- because he either hadn't seen it, or he hadn't done anything to make it happen.

Not that it did any good to dwell on that. Instead, he tipped up her face so he could kiss her. She opened up to him like he knew she would, if, that is, he'd actually known she would. 

At this point, he was ridiculously overheated, despite shedding half his clothing, but he wouldn't want to be anywhere or anywhen else. Without much breaking the kiss, she shifted until she could settle herself astride his lap. When her hands carded through his hair, they pulled a little. She went to withdraw them but stopped when she saw his eyes flutter closed. A contented moan escaped his lips.

"You like that," she said, raking her fingers through his curls.

"You have no idea," he said with a sigh. Then his eyes popped open again. "What am I saying? I have no idea. I may be absolutely terrible at all this."

"Doubtful. I've never seen you be terrible at anything, at least not for long."

"Well, it's been at least a couple of centuries since I made love on a hardwood floor."

"Wrong," she said, a sly grin making her eyes sparkle. "Think."

No, he told himself: remember. And he did. 

There had been some local fermented beverage that made her clumsy and made him more prone to public displays of affection than usual. However, neither of those things could account for exactly why they were mostly fully clothed and going at each other on in a...stairwell?

"Oh dear. Delta Sigma."

"I think I honestly pulled a muscle," she said, giggling to herself. "Here, right under my ribs. Trying to keep balance."

"Just be glad it was him and not me," he said, letting his fingers flutter over the offended muscle. "I don't have that much coordination."

"Neither did I. For that matter, neither did he."

"Ah. So we ended up on the landing on purpose."

"In the grand scheme of things, no. But, yes, the whole standing thing is always better in concept than reality." She smiled, then she cast her eyes around the room, "Speaking of better in concept than reality..."

"I do have a plan," he said in a whisper, right in her ear. "We'll need to wait for nightfall, which is in several of your earth hours, if I recall."

She whispered back, "Why do I feel like at some point we'll be making a mad dash for the TARDIS in nothing but our underclothes."

"I didn't say it was a sophisticated plan," he said, then he pulled back again. "Really, it's so bloody warm in here, I wouldn't mind going starkers."

"I wouldn't mind you going starkers, either."

"Have you always been this much of an exhibitionist? That's not an idle, hypothetical question, by the way."

"Occupational hazard," she replied with a wave of her hand. "And, anyway, you're such a mystery under all those layers."

"You're more than welcome to investigate."

She hesitated, hand pressed to his chest -- not out of nerves but in that way she had of playfully tweaking his confidence. Times like this, it was hard to remember that, in addition to being human, she was also not in her intrepid fourth or fifth century. New as he felt to the universe, that thought was comforting.

She must've seen that he was retreating into thought, because she tapped her finger on his chest, forcing him to focus on her face again. Then, attacking the buttons on his shirt with both hands, she made him reach out to steady her as she dipped her head down to kiss him again.


End file.
